Sorry, a little IHRA news for 2010

[MR.hp]

I am going to post this because it's an interesting story.



Three days after the IHRA’s announcement of a major format overhaul, their contingent of racers,


IHRA President Aaron Polburn believes that the traditional drag racing format no longer gets it done for his sanctioning body. On Friday, the IHRA announced sweeping changes to their race format for 2010.track operators and race fans are digesting the news that the IHRA, for the first time since its 1971 debut, will run without qualifying and a traditional eliminations format.

Friday afternoon, the Norwalk, Ohio-based sanctioning body issued a release stating their 2010 format will essentially be based on a Chicago Style format where each professional eliminator will make two runs during a two-day Nitro Jam event and the final pair of the second session each day will represent the final round.

The IHRA events will no longer carry the designation of Nationals and will be limited to a three-hour window to complete the professional portion of the event.

According to the release, the sportsman competition will remain the same although their championship format was greatly altered for 2009. Sportsman champions are determined through a special “Tournament of Champions” event in which divisional and national event winners are gathered together at the end of the season in a one-race championship.

The complete overhaul of the sanctioning body was something President Aaron Polburn believed was needed to secure the future of the IHRA.

“More than anything else we have had a history of looking at what is successful and what is not successful. We know that after looking at other forms of entertainment it is critical that we package a program into a three hour window with the right ticket price while still providing a great show,” Polburn said. “If we continued to do the same thing that we were doing we were going to continue to get the same results and those are not results that I am happy with.

“By doing what we are doing I think we can expand our audience, put on a better show in a shorter period of time and work inside of a budget for each of the marketplaces.”

Among the changes to the format will be a series of “designer” events where track operators will pick and choose which classes will run at their events. While the IHRA’s Friday statement didn’t list a core group of classes which will run at all of their events, they pointed out the “heavily favored” classes will be Top Fuel, Nostalgia Funny Cars and Pro Fuel, a gathering of injected-nitro dragsters.